Lost without a map: Despite a globalized society, university students can't locate the Atlantic Ocean

Judith Adler started getting suspicious five or six years ago. She can’t pinpoint why, or what, exactly, it was, but the sociologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland had a gnawing sensation, while looking out at the students taking her course on families and the cultural traditions of families the world over, that the undergrads in her room had no idea where in the world some of the places she was talking about actually were.

So the professor did what professors do and gave them a pop quiz consisting of a blank map and a series of questions.

“I asked them to indicate where on the map South America is, where Africa is, and Antarctica, the Arctic, and to circle Europe, label Australia and show where Asia is and label the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans and Mediterranean Sea — and I’ve become much simpler in what I have asked over the years,” Ms. Adler says.

“I used to ask if they could identify France, England or Ireland — which is the background of a lot of students here, or Spain or Portugal, which is important for this part of the world, but I’ve stopped asking that.

“A sizeable proportion of the class would reliably have no idea where the Mediterranean is. Some students would circle Africa and indicate that it’s Europe, and if asked to locate England and Ireland, they would put them in Africa. I have had students that aren’t able to correctly label the Atlantic Ocean, even though we are on it.”

Three-quarters of her students typically fail the quiz, a humdinger of a statistic that mystifies their professor.

“Some students would circle Africa and indicate that it’s Europe, and if asked to locate England and Ireland, they would put them in Africa. I have had students that aren’t able to correctly label the Atlantic Ocean, even though we are on it.”

“There tends to be a punitive response to a story like this,” she says. “The kids get painted as lazy, or the system is blamed for not failing them enough, but that’s not the way I see it, because these kids are intelligent.

“We have a world to give to them, and parents and schools should be taking an interest in showing it to them. A map is an inspiring thing.”

A map, a giant world map — one made of paper — dangling from the blackboards of yesteryear, or the globe sitting at the front of your grade school classroom, or the atlas that, once upon a time, nerdy kids with a fascination for other places, or kids who simply wanted to pass Grade 7 geography, could spend hours flipping through, memorizing capitals and locating Peking (remember when it was Peking?) and seeing the world for the great big place that is, is apparently no longer part of the curriculum of a young Canadian life.

“Something has happened in our educational system,” Ms. Adler says. “I have even had students tell me, with embarrassment, that their high school class went on a trip to Italy but they can’t put Italy on the map, and so that means the trip to Italy didn’t begin with: Where is it?”

Memorial University administrators were not available for comment. A call to the province’s Eastern School District, which includes St. John’s, was answered with the recommendation that I call the Department of Education, since they set the school curriculum for the province. And … the Department of Education didn’t call back.

Basic geography allows us to locate where we are in the world. It gives us a sense of time, and space, and scope, and, alas, Canadian students at MUN appear too spaced out to notice that the ocean they are perched on is the Atlantic.

But learning, as we all theoretically know, is like building a house. It starts with a foundation, a base of knowledge, and it goes up. And if there is no ground floor — and nothing to build upon — and the learner has no clue, say, where Berlin is, how can they possibly understand the rise of Hitler, Canadian soldiers on the beaches of Normandy, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall or the crumbling of the Eurozone?

Basic geography allows us to locate where we are in the world. It gives us a sense of time, and space, and scope, and, alas, Canadian students at MUN appear too spaced out to notice that the ocean they are perched on is the Atlantic.

Professor Adler insists that Generation Now isn’t simply Generation-Not-Too-Smart, since once, with red-faced embarrassment, they fail the test they get a second crack and never fail again, because it is basic stuff. Or should be. What is difficult for Ms. Adler is digesting how we got to this point, especially in an increasingly globalized society, where the distance between Ireland and Canada is covered in a blink by an email but the location of the Atlantic Ocean is a black hole on a map.

“If you think of the lives these students are going to have, because their lives are more global now, some of them will be paying off student debt by perhaps teaching English in Korea, and we’ve had young people of a recent generation risking their lives in Afghanistan, and some will be graduating and getting a job offer in Brazil, maybe,” she says.

“Are they going to find out where these places are for the first time when they step on the plane?”